Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/7/25: World Panic As Trump Doubles Down, Billionaire Warns 'Economic Nuclear Fallout', Poll Shows Americans Reject Tariffs

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss world panic as Trump doubles down, billionaire warns of economic nuclear winter, poll shows Americans scared of tariffs.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Good morning, everybody. It is a gloomy day here in Washington, gloomy fitting the mood of the global economy, Crystal. So what do we have today? Yes, indeed. Trump is doubling down on his tariffs. No sign of some big negotiation or walk back in sight. And global markets already in free fall this morning. This is before the U.S. markets officially open. So we decided to spend the whole show basically talking about tariffs because this is such monumental news with such massive cascading effects for everyone here and globally. So we're going to start with just the details of where we are, what we know. Jeff Stein is going to join. He's going to weigh in on his latest reporting of how this tariff scheme was developed. And also a big fight developing between two Trump supporters, Bill Ackman, who has now come out against the tariffs,

and Howard Lutnick, who, of course, is the Commerce Secretary. We also have the very latest polling about how Americans are feeling about all of this, with the caveat being all of this polling really occurred before the massive market movements, before these massive announcements. So getting early indications, though, about how nervous Americans are about this direction. Elon appears to be breaking with Trump over tariffs and specifically getting into a bit of a battle with Peter Navarro. Protests have also broken out nationwide. These are not just about tariffs, but about,

you know, overwhelming sort of resistance among the Democratic base to Trump and Elon and everything that's going on. So we wanted to take a look at that as well as the first really big nationwide organized resistance to Trump 2.0. And we're going to have a nice discussion debate between Ro Khanna and Oren Kass. It should be interesting to get both of their perspectives. Ro is not some neoliberal free trader. He has a nuanced view on tariffs. I'm interested to hear Oren explain exactly how he feels about everything that is going on and how this plan is being implemented right now as well. That's right. Oren, the more serious person that we could find that will actually defend some of at least what is going on here. So I wanted to make sure we did that.

Yeah, as Crystal said, though, it's going to be a tariff special here. Thank you very much to all of our premium subscribers out there. By the way, the best way that everybody could help with our show right now is really just like, subscribe, and to share it, especially if you're listening on the podcast. Just text it to a friend. Especially, I know tariffs is a very sensitive subject, and a lot of people are trying to wrap their heads around what's going on. So that's why we wanted to really dedicate this to

everybody. And it is, I think, best listened to as a whole. All right, let's go ahead and start with the tariffs. As Crystal said, let's go put this up there on the screen. Some major movement in the Asian and the European markets, basically a massive implosion of all of the stock value across the globe since the announcement of the tariffs. For those who are watching, you can see various stock indices across the world that are down. The minimum is in China, down 5%. Although things changed actually just since we made this graphic, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange having its worst day since 1997 in some 15% drop overnight. Germany down almost 10%, Canada down, the UK down, the United States down over 15%, and the Japanese Nikkei index, I believe, with one of the worst days in the history of that.

They even, I think, had to flip their circuit breaker to stop trading over in Japan. So you can just see what is occurring globally. No sign from Donald Trump yet that he is backing down. He spent the weekend in Florida golfing. We'll return to that in a little bit. On Air Force One, though, he did take a few questions. Here's what he had to say. Is there pain in the market at some point? You're unwilling to tolerate this idea of a Trump put? Is there a threshold? I think your question is so stupid. I mean, I think it's a, I don't want anything to go down. But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something. And we have such a horrible, we have been treated so badly by other countries because we had stupid leadership that allowed this to happen.

They get a smoking when they look at the fact that we have a billion dollar trade deficit. When you look at the trade deficit that we have with certain countries, way over a million per country. With China, it's a trillion dollars. And we have to solve our trade deficit with China. We have a trillion dollar trade deficit with China. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year we lose with China. And unless we solve that problem, I'm not going to make a deal. Those comments would make sense, Crystal, if there were just tariffs on China. Maybe some of us could get behind that,

but that's not really what's going on here. We've got basically an average of some 30% tariff across the world, including 50% or whatever on Vietnam. Multiple countries calling the White House over the weekend might be a bit difficult because the president is down golfing in Mar-a-Lago. He did win his golf championship, though. Congratulations. Well, some good news. That's great. That's right. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is his latest from Truth Social. We have massive financial deficits with China, the European Union and many others. The only way this problem can be cured is with tariffs, which are numbering tens of billions into the USA. They are already in effect and a beautiful

thing to behold. The surplus with these countries has grown during the presidency of sleepy Joe Biden. We are going to reverse it and reverse it quickly. Someday people will realize that tariffs for the United States of America are a very beautiful thing. So there is still yet no, you know, major movement there by the White House. In terms of where we are here in the United States, things are a bit all over the place. As we said, the Japanese index and the Hong Kong index just absolutely got destroyed overnight. The United States markets, it's roughly like 2.5% as of us recording right now. We can put that on the screen just in terms of where everything is. The NASDAQ was down by about 2.8%. It honestly could extend much, much worse.

It was even worse whenever the futures did open this morning. Nobody really quite knows. If, though, that the S&P does fall today more than 4% for a third day in a row, it will be the first time since the Great Depression. And I think that's one of those where it's always difficult to contextualize history when it's actually happening. But the truth is, is that we are in one of the five great market crashes in modern American history from the Great Depression. Not just me saying that, the data indicates this is the worst crash, not only since March of 2020. And then finally, to get to the inevitable retort, they're like, well, why does it matter? And it's like, well, even if you don't own any stocks and that's fine,

I think 58% of Americans do. But for the rest of the country and the bottom of the income scale, the market and the liquidity in that market and the decision making being driven by those companies, that will affect 100% of us. You know, you could have owned zero stocks in 2009, and you still would have suffered the consequences because you would not have any access to the company who wants to hire you, doesn't have any access to cash. They have no market. They have no liquidity. They have no ability to borrow. They're going bust. You know, these capital markets, for better or for worse, and I think for worse now, do absolutely rule our entire lives. And we'll talk about that, I think, more in terms of tariff strategy

and what I think the biggest flaw in the overall rollout in the strategy was is that fact is, is that we're basically asking private markets to act in a way that we believe is beneficial to the state, but with no real incentive, both to the company, for the employer, to minimize any sort of short-term,

not even short-term, long-term economic pain now at this point. That's another, everyone's like, oh, well, he could cut a deal and he could cut a deal and things could surge. It's like, yeah, they could, but you know, in the interim, there are a lot of companies, even in this week, that will pay literally millions of dollars in tariffs. You can't just take millions of dollars off of somebody's bottom line and expect nothing to happen. I mean, it just doesn't really work that way. And that's where I continue to fall. Even if this is a short-term strategy, there's a lot of pain in that short-term strategy for millions of people, not to mention the level

of uncertainty in the markets, in the overall pocketbooks. The amount of consumer spending that's going to shrink as a result of this genuinely cannot be overstated. Yeah. I don't think anyone really knows how massive the fallout is going to be. Like, there is no limit to how bad it could be. And, yeah, Trump could walk back from it at any time. I mean, he walked back from the, you know, the height of the Canada and Mexico tariffs. This man is a madman. He's all over the place.

But there's a big debate on econ Twitter at this point of, like like we may already be past the point of no return in a certain respect. Because let's say today he comes out and says, you know what? I have deals with 50 countries. Good enough. We're rolling this back to a lower level and we'll revisit it a month from now, which is kind of the playbook that he's been running. Do you think if you are someone making decisions for a major business, a major manufacturing concern, like, is this going to give you confidence to want to invest more in the United States of America? Of course not. Of course not. I mean, if you're

running any company, including our own, by the way, thinking about how things are going to go and, you know, how people are feeling with a potential recession coming and how their premium membership budget is looking at this point. Like you are going to freeze in place at best. And at worst, you're going to start saying, you know what, these people, this project that we had going that we were hopeful for, for the future, this is just not the environment to do it in. So in some ways, even if at this point Trump were to come out and say, just kidding, guys, you know, late April Fool's joke, Liberation Day is over. Who is going to want to invest in this climate?

And, you know, I used to get really irritated with all the like uncertainty talk because this was used against, you know, any sort of like progressive economic policy that would benefit working class people or whatever. But at a certain point, you really do, as a business owner, as an investor, as someone who is an executive in a company, you need some sort of stable policy climate in which to make decisions. And you will not have that with this president, period. You will not have that with this president. And I think given the, you know, seesaw nature of American politics, I think there are a lot of countries and a lot of companies here and around the world that are saying, I don't know if we'll ever have that with the U.S. again, period. You know, a couple things

that I just wanted to emphasize from Trump's comments and why they sent the markets into such a freefall. You know, last week, of course, there were significant market losses. But I think we both had the feel of like, it actually could have been worse. Oh, it could have been much worse. And the reason for that is because there was still a hope on Wall Street of like, Trump's going to come on on Sunday before the futures market opens, and he's going to announce a bunch of deals, and he's going to step away from this. And instead, he makes this comment. Sometimes you have to take the medicine, number one, and seems to not care at all about the nuclear bomb that he's dropped on the global economy, which just on like a personal level,

thinking about this person's psychology, I cannot wrap my head around someone who would drop this level of bomb and then just go, I'm going to go play golf. I'm going to go host a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, like insanity. But so he says that in no indication of making these deals. And in fact, he told his surrogates, I don't want you to say these are a starting point for negotiations. No, these are in place and that's that. And then the other thing he said that was so disconcerting is he's holding on to this idea that if you have a trade deficit with any country, no matter what the dynamics are, like we talked about Lesotho last week, right? This poor African nation that we buy diamonds for, and they're too poor to afford our products. And in his mind, that means that Lesotho is ripping us off, okay? Idiotic, stupid, like the

most kindergarten level of understanding of trade you could possibly imagine. But he reiterates that. And it matters not only for understanding how stupid the policy is, which most people, I think, already understand, but it also matters because what deal can Lesotho make with us that's going to fix that problem? There isn't one. So, you know, countries that had in anticipation of Trump loving tariffs had rolled back their tariffs rate, trying to get ahead of it. Say, like, Israel is one example of that. Like, look, we don't even charge you any tariffs. They still got hit with tariffs. There is no deal that you can make with virtually any of these countries

that's just going to close the trade deficit overnight. That is not how this works. And so that was the other thing that made a lot of investors go, what the fuck? Because that indicates there are no grand bargains or deals. This is not just a negotiating tactic. He may really be serious about moving forward with this. And it is just as nonsensical as it appears on its face when you're looking at, you know, the Penguin Islands and this stupid formula that we're going to talk more about that they may not even be applying correctly. It really doesn't matter to him what the carnage is, what the fallout is. You know, he has this idea in his head about terrorists, number one. And number two, he likes that he likes that the whole world is jumping at his moves. He loves that all these countries are having to call and scramble, that all these companies are going to come on bended knee to try to get their car, to try to get their exemption.

And he loves that he can do all of this, apparently, without having to consult a single person. I mean, the power to raise revenue and institute tariffs is supposed to be with Congress. He's using IEFN in a very similar way to how he's, you know, using these sort of like national security or national emergency car bounds to claim extraordinary powers for himself. That's what he's doing here with tariffs. There will be court challenges. I don't know how that will go. I don't think anyone knows really how that will go. But he also likes what he loves about

this is that it all comes down to him. And he can be the dictator and he doesn't have to ask anyone for anything. And all the chaos around him doesn't bother him one bit. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills

I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still

somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for.

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Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Stephens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men.

And then me too happened. And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh dad, all they was doing was talking about your thing in class.

I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh, my God, it's go time. You actually sent it? Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcasts. Well, I mean, why would it bother him? As you said, it's very, you know, it's something that feeds his own conception of what's going on. But what I just simply cannot move away from is that there's genuine, like, massive pain. Not even being done necessarily to billionaires or companies or anything. That's like real folks who have retirement accounts who are watching these just evaporate. I mean, look, let's also contextualize it correctly. You know, one year of gains in the S&P 500 are erased. That means basically if you had money over the last year and you were chunking it away into your 401k and you were doing everything that

you're supposed to do, that money is gone or it's, you know, it's now it's actually down. And if you look at over at the five-year period, it was a common talking point. Oh my gosh, the S&P 500 is up over a hundred percent. Well, now it's down to 82. So now we're already back to 2024, you know, style valuation. Let's wait another week. What are we going to go back to? 2023, you know, the backward clock that's ticking here for a lot of people, there's a sizable percentage of the country, which is over 65, and a sizable percentage even more that are over 70. I was telling you this morning, there are a lot of people who are on retirement who have mandatory withdrawals from their IRA accounts. So what if you're literally forced to sell at the bottom? I mean, that's a horrible thing to be inflicting on

people. Finally, as you, and I just want to really stick on this point with the capital markets, the way that this is being basically rolled is we're implementing this massive tariff. And so if you want to build here, you have to move here. We will not compensate you at all in the interim. We are not giving you a tax break. In fact, Steve Mnuchin, the former Secretary of the Treasury, was on CNBC on Friday, and I actually thought he gave a great answer. He was like, look, of course we can have tariffs. I mean, you know, I'm pro-tariff. I know you are in some cases as well. Yeah, you know what that needs to be paired with? A dollar for dollar manufacturing credit and or infusion from capital of Congress, which would mean what? For Apple, let's say,

we want Apple to build an iPhone here in America or build more of it, okay? Let's say 50% of it, something like that here in the United States. Well, that's going to cost X, Y, and Z. We will then acknowledge that we can have Apple pony up some of that cash. Congress and then others, the administration, will say, we will also kick a tax credit or a break to make sure that you don't fire people in the interim and you don't wreak havoc on our overall equities markets, which is what we're currently having. There's none of it. Actually, the Congress wants to remove manufacturing tax credits right now so that they can pay for a permanent extension or whatever, some of these corporate taxes. That's what I want people to understand. So the problem

is that not only do we have a massive tariff regime in place, we are actually currently have a GOP led Congress, which wants to reduce the amount of social spending that there is while extending corporate tax costs and not increasing manufacturing tax credits, which would actually benefit all of the stated goal of bringing things over. And that's why I'm just like, this is so it's not even stupid. Stupid is something that doesn't necessarily bear consequences. This has massive consequences. And, you know, that's another thing too, where, you know, the administration is really banking on like, oh, well, he said he was going to do, it's like, well, okay, hold on a second. Nobody, nobody, and this is why the markets crashed as they were, ever floated a 35% or 40% tariff.

Nobody floated. When you say reciprocal tariffs, that's a word. It has a meaning. It has a definitional term, right? And at best, Crystal, with the actual calculation from what I can tell of what a reciprocal tariff would mean, even with currency market manipulation and all that, is maybe 5% to 10% whenever it comes to China. On Japan, it would be 5%. And actually, it might even be zero if you factor in a few other things. Do you know why he

decided not to do that? Because the number was not big enough. So that's where this is 10 times out of step, even with allegedly many of the things that he sold on the campaign trail. And that is why you are seeing the level of freak out. And look, very soon, real voters, you're all going to you are going to feel this in a very real way. Screw retirement. We're talking layout. We've already seen it. We've already seen Stellantis layoffs, 900 people in Michigan. We've already seen people freeze investment.

Just wait. Start asking around for people who are like, yeah, we had a project and it got pulled. You're going to see consultants go down. If the pharma tariffs eventually do go into place, oh my God, just good luck to the entire US consulting industry, Accenture and also people. Do I love those industries? No, but there's a lot of people who work there and they propel a lot of people there as well. If we want to change things, we need tax credits. We need capital infusion. Currently, it's a $400 to $500 billion raise on people. If you take that amount of money out

of the economy, you've got to put it back in at the same time. But they don't want to do any of that. Yeah, that's right. So we're looking at an 08 level liquidity crunch. And also, this final word here, our economy is leveraged to the hilt. We learned nothing from 2008. When you start to drop 15 to 20, we're talking margin calls at the top of Wall Street. We're talking these major Fortune 500, they are levered up to the hilt, maybe not 100 times like they were during 2008. But we've really learned very little about debt crises and all this because it's been 15 years of cheap money. That is all going to end. And when you pull all that back out of the economy, I can't even begin to describe, like, what the layoffs and the unemployment situation and all that is going to look like.

Isn't it Warren Buffett who says when the stock market goes down, you find out who's swimming without shorts? Yeah, that's right. It's true. I mean, it's empirically true. Everybody is. I was reading an article about how everybody's making calls around to try to figure out what the equivalent of like the Lehman Brothers this time is some entity that's really at the center that's over leveraged at this or that. Or, you know, it could also be some gigantic manufacturing concern that had, you know, move forward with all these investments potentially related to the the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act, which, by the way, like they weren't enough. Those things were working to increase significantly. You can look at the we're

going to show the chart when we talk to Rowan Oren, manufacturing infrastructure investment in this country. And not only are they not doing the analogous thing for whatever industries that they want to build up. But CHIPS Act is being de facto rolled back because Doge went in and like cut half the staff that was implementing this. And again, it has been very, very successful. The IRA, because it focuses on things like, you know, EV batteries and green energy, like Trump doesn't like that. So that's being hacked out as well.

So like the things that were actually working to increase manufacturing investment in this country are being killed. There are no corresponding tax credits. And by the way, with this level of across the board tariff, even that, like what you're going to subsidize everything in the entire, you're going to subsidize banana production and coffee bean production and diamond mine production. It still would be insanity given the way that they're moving forward. But there's none of that either.

In fact, there's an austerity push on the other side. And then, you know, even if you think about the advanced manufacturing that we have here, all their, so many of their either raw materials or the parts that they're sourcing come from overseas. So they're being hit with those tariffs when they're trying to import things to, you know, assemble a complicated final product. And so, no, I mean, I think this is much more likely to negatively impact, to damage significantly the manufacturing investment production that we do have than it is to spur any sort of

a renaissance. You know, last thing I'll say, I mean, I'm sure I'll have many other comments that I can make today and I will make in the future, et cetera. But you really do have to look at this as class warfare. And I know that this is being framed as like, oh, this is going to be great for the working class. Nonsense. Trump has said he wants to get rid of the income tax. And certainly, even if he doesn't achieve that maximalist goal, he's going to extend the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, which is a gigantic tax cut for the richest people in the country. And he wants to move towards funding the government through tariffs. Tariffs are a regressive tax. They hit the working class way harder than they hit rich

people because the working class, of course, spends much more as a larger percent of their income on goods. So when prices are going up for groceries and toilet paper and clothes and medicine and everything else that you could think of in the fresh fruits and vegetables, like so much of what is consumed here comes from overseas. That is incredibly, incredibly regressive. And it is going to hurt working class people. It's going to devastate them. Now, obviously, like the rich people are getting hurt right now in the market as well. But the impetus here and why he always talks about McKinley, because what was the state

of taxation under McKinley? It was all effectively tariffs. There was no income tax in place. And that is the direction that he wants to move things in. So, you know, it's I always I think it's really important to talk about the specifics of what the formula is and how it's being implemented and how it doesn't make sense. But I also think we have to keep in mind the bigger picture of what he is actually trying to accomplish. And I think among those things are, again, consolidating power and a power grab. And I also think it is shifting the burden of taxation onto working class people, shifting the burden of funding the government onto working class people. And, you know, if he sticks with this plan, it is going to be devastating for so many. And the market, the market matters. I don't want to say that it's

like, oh, who cares that the market is crashing. There's real, there is real pain there as, as Saver is indicating, but the market is also just the first indicator of how catastrophic this is going to be. Look at how regular people fared in coming out of the housing crisis. Look at how regular people would have fared in the COVID crash had there not been a massive government infusion to support people. You know, look at how regular people fail, fare in any recession, any massive market crash. And there is no indication that there is some major government program coming to help support people through these times. In Trump's words, we just got to take the medicine. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone,

I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line,

I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for.

If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much.

And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Steffens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened. And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest

daughter, her first day in ninth grade and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh dad, all they was doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And Slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like I feel the turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money.

I'm like, oh my God, it's go time. You actually sent it? Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcasts. I think that's a good place to transition to Jeff and talk with him about his reporting. He's been so good on this issue, even going back to the campaign. You know, he was one who was saying, like, listen, guys, he talks about tariffs a lot.

And you're right that he never laid out this particular scheme. But he did lay out pretty maximalist tariff ideas. I don't think Wall Street ever took him seriously. They thought they were getting their tax cuts and that this was just like a negotiating tactic. And, you know, it would be something like the level of tariff imposition from his first term. Maybe it amped up a little bit, but I don't think they ever took that particularly seriously. And Jeff has also done a fantastic job digging into the behind the scenes and surprising no one. It really was Trump who

said, this is the way that I want to do it. Some of his advisors had been working on some more sophisticated level of tariff plan. And he said, no, no, no. And the decision making went up to the hours before he made the announcement there at the White House. So with that being said, let's go ahead and get to economics. Chief Economics Reporter, is that his name now? I want to give him his fancy name. He's got a fancy title at The Washington Post now. Let's see. Chief Economics Reporter. Chief Economics Reporter Jeff Stein from The Washington Post. Joining us now is the Chief Economics Reporter for The Washington Post, Jeff Stein, a great friend of the show. Good to see you, Jeff. You've been number one to be reading this week as we enter and post liberation. This and every week.

Yeah, that's right. All the reporting skills I've learned were here on Breaking Point. That is absolutely not true. All right, let's go and let's get at Jeff's reaction. He's gonna break down not only Donald Trump's role behind all of this, he will reveal the truth behind the fake formula.

Many of us paid notice to the fact that many of the tariffs were being put into place on some unpopulated islands. The USDA secretary was actually asked about this, or sorry, the secretary of agriculture was asked about this over the weekend. Let's take a listen. We'll get your reaction. Why are you putting import tariffs on islands that are entirely populated by penguins. Well, I mean that, come on, Jake, obviously here's the bottom line. We live under a tariff regime from other countries. We have too long the idea that America goes first. I mean, come on, Whatever. Listen, the people that are leading this are serious, intentional, patriotic, the smartest people I've ever worked with. I did not come up with the

formulas. So Jeff, who came up with this formula? Where did this thing come from? You've got the story. We'll put it up there, but you can talk while we show off your work. The weird thing about that answer, with all due respect to the Agriculture Secretary, is like, if I was a Trump cabinet official, I feel like I could have given a somewhat cogent response. Like, the reason that these tiny little islands were hit by the tariffs is in part because there's some concerns that they could be vehicles for transshipment, right? Like, if you're a foreign country and you're trying to just send something to a country that, you know, the tiny little island, then you reincorporate, say that that good is now from that island and then send it onward.

That's what I would have said if I was the agriculture secretary, even though the idea that a substantial proportion of trade could be rerouted through an island with like 12 penguins and no people on it is probably overblown. Like that's what she could have said in response. Even, I mean, according to the trade experts I've spoken to, even more kind of shocking about this formula that they use to determine country-specific tariffs, which are different than the universal ones that they applied on all countries, which we can talk about sort of the criticisms of and the very strong criticisms of. The country specific tariffs hit countries based on essentially their trading deficit with the U.S. And so you have countries like Lesotho, which is a big diamond exporter to the U.S., which is an incredibly poor country, of course we buy more from Lesotho than they do from us. That has nothing to do with the things that the White House and Trump are talking about

as being the impetus of this global trade war, right? Because they're saying, look, there is some truth to this part, that the U.S. is a global purchaser of stuff across the world, that we have a global trade imbalance, which is all true, that it is particularly bad with some countries like China, and that they exports to the U.S. because they have nefarious currency arrangement or high tariff areas on our exports because it's an incredibly poor country. It would make no sense for Lesotho to be buying more stuff from us than we do from them.

So that's, I think, the overarching frame. And to your question, Sagar, like, why do they do this? We had reporting last week about how the Trump administration's sort of top economic minds had for weeks been working on a formula that was narrowly about sort of the thing, the problem that they're ostensibly trying to solve, which you can debate whether it's worth solving, but this issue of us buying more than we sell to the rest of the thing, the problem that they're ostensibly trying to solve, which you can debate whether it's worth solving, but this issue of us buying more than we sell to the rest of the world. And they had a plan that took into account, they had several plans that took into account all kinds of currency manipulation factors and tariffs. And they were coming up with sophisticated measures to deal with that. I cannot prove who wrote the more crude formula that was widely mocked at that Trump, as we reported, personally selected. formulas previously endorsed by Peter Navarro, who is sort of the most ultra-maximalist trade

hawk in Trump's orbit. And so I'll just leave that observation there. Yeah. I want to get from you the reaction from Bill Ackman, who is now very unhappy with these tariffs. And of course, he's been a big Trump supporter. He's also accusing Howard Letnick of profiting off of the crash of the stock market. If we could put before up on the screen, guys, this is what part of what he's famous for these freaking way too long posts

on Twitter. But in any case, this is a portion of what he had to say. He said business is a confidence game. The president's losing the confidence of business leaders around the globe. The consequences for our country and millions of our citizens who have supported the president, in particular low-income consumers who are already under a huge amount of economic stress, are going to be severely negative. This is not what we voted for. The president has an opportunity on Monday to call a timeout, have the time to execute on fixing an unfair tariff system.

Alternatively, we are heading for a self-induced economic nuclear winter and we should start hunkering down. May cooler heads prevail. Before I get into the, you know, the attack then on Howard Lutton, Commerce Secretary, I just would love to get your reaction to Ackman, you know, and his position here and saying, hey, you got to call a timeout here or else we're headed for this economic nuclear winter. Because you've been pointing out for a long time, listen, guys, he's serious about these tariffs. Now, did he float this particular formula on the campaign trail? No. But he was floating some pretty maximalist positions. And it certainly seems like people like Bill Ackman and a lot of the other Wall Street types who were excited about a Trump

administration, they thought they were getting their tax cut. They did not think that they were getting self-induced global economic meltdown. Yeah, I mean, just from a writerly perspective, I think that the technical term here is burying the lead. If you're saying we might be headed for economic nuclear winter, normally you don't put it at the bottom of 600 words of text. And after, you know, seven paragraphs of expository throat clearing. Was very New York Times of him. Yeah.

Yeah. No comment. I'm I think, you know, exactly as you're saying, it's been, you know, really remarkable to see. I don't think anything Trump has done is really that surprising based on his campaign rhetoric, based on the reporting. I mean, I wrote a story in August 2023. You can go look it up. I promise it's real. It says in detail that President Trump is seriously considering or plans to, if reelected, launch a global trade war that includes tariff barriers as high as 60% on China, which is pretty close to what they ended up with. That would include a universal tariff of up to 10 or 20%, which is almost double what he in fact actually proposed in terms of universal tariffs that includes these sectoral tariffs on on um entire industries that we haven't even seen yet right so like for all the all the um sort of financial carnage we've

seen in markets like some of the biggest measures that they're considering are not even yet announced so that's that's tariffs on all kinds of um that the same good that come in wherever they're from and autos we've seen but farm a lumber copper etc um you know as i've been pointing out on twitter it's just it's hard for me to understand how some of the richest people in the world couldn't afford 150 subscriptions to the washington post and it makes me wonder like, why I didn't just start an investment service for these guys and charge like 10 times my current salary, because there were people who, you know, I have sources who are lobbyists, who are paid

four, five, six times what I am paid to give Wall Street advice on how to invest and how to navigate Washington. And a lot of times our reporting was much closer to what actually happened. So I could ramble on about this for days. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a good point. To be fair, though, also, despite you writing it, there were also a lot of people who worked for him telling a lot of those people, just don't worry about it. It's not going to happen. So, you know, it's not like he wasn't also feeding them a lot of what they wanted to hear during the campaign. I guess that might be true.

But like, I definitely take it as a possibility that I'm just like not talking to the right people. But I don't know. I'm not like the best source reporter in America. But, you know, there are people who are like in the Trump circle who talk to me and they have they have been like very clear, like for a year and a half or two years to me now that like you talk to Trump one on one about this stuff. Like there is no or very little sort of like, yeah, this is a bluff. Yeah. Like this is designed to get people to move. It's like, I talked to a Senator a couple of months ago and he said that he was like begging Trump to like not do the tariffs. And Trump was like, basically just said, we need to get back to where McKinley was over and over to this Senator. And the Senator was like, what are you, what are you talking about? So, I mean, I think there is an element that there are people close to Trump

who are saying to Wall Street, this isn't serious. But I also think people were just kind of seeing and hearing things that weren't really even being said. Does that make sense? That's fair. Yeah, they were hearing what they want to do. Let's go ahead and get the attack on Lettning. Now, he has since walked this back and apologized for it. But I think this is B4B that we can put up on the screen here. So Ackman says, I just figured out why Howard Letnick, who, of course, is the Commerce Secretary and adamant Trump tariff defender on cable news, is indifferent to the stock market and the economy crashing. He and Cantor, that's his firm,

are long on bonds. He profits. When our economy implodes. It's a bad idea to pick a secretary of commerce whose firm is levered long fixed income. It's an irreconcilable conflict of interests. Of course, this administration is rife with conflicts of interest. If you aren't cashing in in this administration, I don't know what you're doing. But what did you make of this from Ackman? As I said, he did walk this back and apologize. I think Lutnick, he must be doing his best in a very difficult position, whatever. But, you know, do you think there's, is this fair critique of Lutnick at all? And also, bigger picture, what do you make of these two, you know, previously very solid Trump supporters? Lutnick, I don't think has weighed in,

but Ackman attacking him directly. Yeah, I don't know much about the internal positions of Cantor Fitzgerald. I do think it doesn't make a ton of sense that this strategy on crashing the market would lead to an uptick in bond sales. I mean, it would mostly affect the issuance, which is a U.S. government function. So it's hard for me to see, like, that really... I mean, I guess you could see the price of existing outstanding bonds go up, but I don't know. At a very minimum, like, I just would like to see a lot more

or any evidence at all of this before even suggesting there's anything there. I think on the political dynamic, I think it is really interesting that we're seeing an increasing number of people in the Trump orbit attack not the president, but sort of people around him. Elon Musk over the weekend went after Peter Navarro, who, as I mentioned, this sort of worked this whole strategy. Bill Ackman, they're going after not the president himself, but the commerce secretary. And there seems to be an element of like this can't have been the president's fault personally. So we need to find a stand in. You know, it's like the king always could never be wrong.

It's advisors. That's right. So I think there is an element of that going on where people are trying to find maybe a fall guy that Trump can then be like, oh, this whole lapse was like this guy's fault. It's all Trump guys. This is like all being done by the president. Like you see those clips of him in 1980 being like Japan is ripping us off. It's him, you know, but if that's what they need to do to feel like they can sort of make clear to Trump that this has to change without hitting him directly, I think we're going to see more of that. Gives him a way to save face potentially of like,

oh, what this guy gave me some terrible advice. Sorry, Howard Lundick, you're out. Right. Last question for you then, Jeff, where do you think things are going to go for the next week? So the administration's cope is 50 different countries have called us and we're negotiating. What does that mean? I mean, we reported last week that the Trump White House sent out internal talking points to their people saying, do not characterize this as a negotiation. And Mutnick has, and Besson, they've all been saying, like, this is not going to be resolved in days or weeks. Is there a chance that in the back of his head, Donald Trump is still thinking, like, tell everyone in my inner circle that this is not a negotiation so that we have higher leverage with the rest of the world as the economy implodes. It's possible, but I don't really think so.

And so far, I've continually taken the under on the Trump is bluffing by a lot, and I think people would be wise to continue to do so. I do have one more for you, Jeff. Just on the political temperature from Republicans, there is starting to be an effort for Congress to reclaim what should be its power over levying tariffs. Many Republicans have, first of all, I mean, they're terrified to go against Trump to start with. He has really consolidated control over that party. And second of all, they were comforting themselves with the idea of like, oh, some of them are even saying like, oh, he's going to use this as a negotiating tool to take tariffs down to zero.

So this is actually free trade. Like this is, you know, totally in line with my chamber of commerce orientation here. Increasingly, that position is untenable. So do you think that there could be some significant breakage within the own part, his own party, you know, among Senate Republicans in particular from Trump and this tariff insanity? Yeah, I think it's common, especially like if we get to Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and we're in a bear market and the recession is hitting, their need to be loyal to Trump will start to crack. And I think you're seeing some signs of that already with this still somewhat tepid congressional review of terror policy bill moving forward.

You're seeing more Republicans than would have been conceivable a few weeks ago sign up for that. But that's not really going to be enough to rein Trump in at all, just based on the Texas legislation. Will more aggressive legislation be proposed if this gets worse? I definitely think so. I mean, it's incredible to think about, you know, congressional Republicans were furious about President Biden's unilateral $400 billion or so student loan bailout. And Trump, by the White House's own accounting, is moving forward with a unilateral $6 trillion tax hike, you know, more than 10 times the size of the student loan bailout.

The legal questions there are certainly different. But, you know, I think a lot of Republicans in their bones are not OK with this. And you're going to hear from them pretty soon. I agree. All right, then. Thank you for joining us. We appreciate it. Thanks, Jeff. I know you're super busy. We really appreciate it. Thanks. you too. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders.

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Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. so we're just talking to jeff stein there about how republicans may react to all of this and they will likely be watching very closely the public reaction to what is going on in the markets and with trump's tariff policy harry enton took a look last week at the polling that we do have at this point about how Americans feel about this direction. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. The press secretary criticized the people she calls the naysayers when it comes to these tariffs. Who are the naysayers? The naysayers are the majority of the American public.

It's the American people who are the naysayers, oppose new tariffs on other countries. All goods. Look at this. 56 percent of Americans oppose new tariffs on all goods. How about cars in particular? 56% of Americans oppose new tariffs on imported cars and car parts. Look, the bottom line is the American people oppose, oppose, oppose. No, no, no. They do not want new tariffs. I looked at a ton of polling.

It's really hard to find any in which you find folks supporting new tariffs, maybe against China, but against all other countries, especially our allies. No, no, no. Oppose, oppose, oppose. So Caroline Leavitt again told Kate in that discussion that the president is laser focused on reducing prices. What do voters say that they believe the tariffs will do to prices? What do voters believe the tariffs will do to prices? At least in the short term, tariffs will raise prices. Again, what do we get here?

72% of Americans overall say that the prices will go up in the short term. How about among Republicans, the Republican base? This was a shocker to me. Sixty four percent of Republicans believe that tariffs will in fact cause prices to go up in the near term and get this just five percent, five percent of Americans overall believe that tariffs, at least in the short term, will bring down prices. You don't have to be a mathematical genius to know, Mr. Berman, that 72 beats five. So a lot of a lot of warnings

there for this direction from the president and for his party. And we can put this up on the screen from YouGov. This was a poll taken on April 3rd. And they say that among U.S. adults, only 13 percent on March 9th through 11th, and then 19% on April 3rd, say that raising tariffs will help the average American. And there's a big partisan divide here where there's a significant number of Republicans who say it will help. But even there, it's not a majority. It is plurality at 39%. Among Democrats, it's only 6% think they will help. Among independents, it's only 14%. So there is next to zero confidence among the American public that this is actually going to be, you know, taking the medicine and on the other side, some grand utopia weight soccer. Yeah, that's right.

If you look at it overall, and we still have not yet seen the impact, that's actually probably the most important point to underscore. This is where you start at. The market is the leading indicator. The price at Walmart hasn't gone up yet, right? You haven't actually even seen the layoffs. We just know that it's likely coming unless there's some major impact. But in the interim, this is the baseline from which you're beginning with. So that's really not where you want to be.

Let's go and put the next one up there on the screen, though. And this is the word of caution for everybody who's out there who is hoping and praying for some big shift in the Republican base. I'm not so sure. It says, quote, Republican skepticism of free trade surfaced when voters were asked whether tariffs help or hurt the economy. 77% said tariffs help create jobs and are beneficial.

93% of Democrats said they raise prices and are a negative force. The survey was taken before the market down on Thursday and Friday, but it is still an indicator of where things were beforehand. Trump successfully completely flipped that in terms of the Republican and the Democratic bases, how they thought broadly about tariffs. Probably the best idea of negative polarization. But it does just show us that even with everything that there is right now, you and I all need to remember the level of trust

that a lot of these Republican voters have in Donald Trump. They don't trust the media. They don't trust, you know, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or CNBC. If anything, they like seeing Jim Cramer and these other people panicking, right? There's a lot of negative polarization. In fact, the best argument I've heard that's pro-tariff is everybody who was wrong about this, this, this, and this are the people who are upset about tariffs. I sympathize with that. Whenever you see yourself, as I do, somehow in agreement with people posting

Milton Friedman memes, it makes me cringe. I'm like, maybe I'm entirely wrong about this entire thing. I don't think so, but obviously anybody who thinks they're right, you know, broadly does. But that is the broader thinking. You have an entire part of the American electorate, which is negatively polarized against every institution trying to tell them that this is wrong. It's only going to harden their beliefs, almost certainly, at an emotional level. And really, I don't think that there will be any grand flip for them unless there is some serious economic fallout. And as we just said, it's just not there yet. Yes, the stock market and all of that is there, but that's just a prelude. If you think about 2009, what was the absolute bottom and the worst part of it? It's not when the market dropped by 50%. It's when people were

fire-sailing their houses and people were showing up to occupy Wall Street. It takes some 18 months for this stuff to really bleed into the overall economy. Somebody goes to the bank. Somebody goes to the bank. People are not lending. There's a liquidity crunch. There's rate crises and all this stuff. Get fired from my job six months later because cash reserves have fallen down. That's when the stuff really starts to roll. So we're still not there yet. I think people should buckle up. Yeah. Republicans are very much in trust the plan mode. Yeah. No doubt about it. Like you said, they don't believe anybody but Trump. And so if Trump is like, this is going to be great, they're like, all right, well, we'll see. Maybe it's going to

be great. I don't know. And the question is, and if we could put the last element actually up on the screen here, guys, C5, the question is, once it gets from, quote unquote, just a market drop, and you start to see even more companies laying off workers, and prices are going up, and you likely are in a situation of stagflation and the economic disaster in ordinary people's lives, if we get to a place, God forbid, where that becomes undeniable, does that change anything? And the lowest approval ratings, this is a Nate Cohen write-up, he says, for Republicans, tariffs pose a risk like no other. Trump's political strength is built on the economy.

If it sinks, he could drag his party down with him. He has a whole, you know, look at the way that recessions have normally worked out for presidents. And this one, if we do end up in recession, will be completely self-inflicted. And there will be no ability. Like Obama in 2010, 2012 was like, hey, I'm still trying to pull us out of this mess that these last guys left. You know, Biden, same thing with Trump coming out of the COVID crash. Like, I'm just trying to get things back together after these people screwed things up. Trump is not going to have that lecture. Like he owns this 100%.

There is no ability to be like, oh, but Joe Biden, no, you are the one who did this and architected this. So it lands in your lap. So if there is a recession, it will undeniably be because of the singular person of Donald J. Trump. And Nate writes in this piece, he says, the tariffs announced Wednesday introduced a political problem of an entirely different magnitude for Trump and his party. No party or politician is recession-proof. Historically, even truly dominant political parties have suffered enormous political defeats during major economic downturns. In none of those cases, not even with the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff, could the president

be held responsible for the downturn as self-evidently as today. And whatever it may have felt like, after the election, the Republican Party is not even close to politically dominant. Keep in mind, like, and this is part of why Trump is, I think, in such complete giving no fucks about anything mode is like, he doesn't care about the Republican Party. He doesn't really care if it's a complete bloodbath in the midterms. He's doing whatever he wants anyway. And so you also have to keep in mind, as popular as he is with the base, he's not going to be on the ballot in the midterm elections. And we have seen consistently that his popularity with the Republican base does not translate over to the broader Republican Party. So, yeah, they have to be looking at the results in Wisconsin, have to be looking at the leader of their the undisputed leader of their party.

Intentionally, it appears crashing the entire economy and go, oh, shit. Like if we're in if I'm in a district that's less than Trump plus 15, I'm starting to get real nervous looking at what is going on here. I hate to say it, but you know who I see making big bets that I think are going to pay off? Ted Cruz. And I hate to say it, but you know who I see making big bets that I think are going to pay off? Ted Cruz. And I hate to say it, but I see him out there. He's countersignaling on tariffs. He's talking about tax hikes. He's trying to loop it into some of his old school conservatism. And Ted Cruz is a guy, his hard line on immigration, but anti-tariff. One of those people who could credibly say, I ran against Donald Trump in 2016. And I'm not just the one calling this. Other people are. So they're like, I think he's going to challenge

J.D. Vance for the nomination. And if you think about what the future of that might look like, Trump has already said he doesn't want to endorse anybody. Actually, he wants to run for a third term. But let's assume that he's just going to sit this one out and let people dangle in the wind. Well, you would rather be on the record against that. And again, I hate to say it because I think Ted Cruz is totally wrong. Ted Cruz is an actual unironic free trader who doesn't believe in tariffs at all, who believes in this Tea Party libertarian vision. But let's be honest. I mean, the bad way that this is all being handled and rolled out, it's going to poison the well of tariff discussion for a generation.

Which really sucks. It's horrible. I was thinking about it, you know, in terms of 2008 for people like us who really became politically aware at that time. Anytime I hear about leverage or credit defaults, I'm just like, no, you know, it's baked in for all of us who lived through all of that.

Well, think about if you're, you know, me, 12 years younger, what are you living through? Man, if you're a college senior right now, holy shit, can you imagine having to graduate into this economy? I mean, it'd be one of those where if you, especially, you know, with the overall lead times for where we are. What, we're only a month or so away from college graduation, I think. What are they going to do? Yeah, I think. What are they going to do? Yeah. I mean, what are you going to do? And there are a lot of signs just like 09. Law school applications are double what they were just from last year. That's a terrible sign. It means people are willing to leverage up to 200K in the hopes that things are better three

years from now. By the way, newsflash, it's not going to be. But as those people found out at that time, I know a lot of those folks, it didn't end up working out so well for them. But all of the signs are there. So you're graduating in a month. Okay. No, we're looking at Occupy again. That's what happened last time, 18 months or so. And so the polling and the way that the base and all of that will be negatively impacted could genuinely poison the well on tariffs, not just for them, but for the entire country writ large. And it's, again, I hate this because politically we are such a yo-yo nation. We're just going to flip back to some sort of Obama-esque, you know, argument, which is going to make a lot of sense to a lot of people who

were willing to listen. I mean, and it's unfortunate because there actually was a new bipartisan consensus around some level of intelligent trade protectionism. You know, Trump and Trump could have claimed credit for that. Absolutely. He started that direction with the tariffs he put on China, which I supported. You supported. They didn't actually accomplish that much because they weren't paired with industrial policy, but they did open the door. And then Biden is able with the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act, which again, no one is saying that this is like, we made the economy and it was the end all be all. But these were significant investments that were paying off. They genuinely were working for critical investments for industries that are going to be important in the future and important for national security. And Trump is blowing that up. And now the, you know, that consensus about tariffs,

there's this Western Pennsylvania Democratic representative. He's like represents an area around Pittsburgh, Representative Deluzio. And we're trying to get him on the show. Actually, I think we have him booked for this week. I don't want to speak with him, but, you know, he's comes from this like blue collar part of Pennsylvania and very like union heavy, et cetera. And he put out this video that was like listen guys tariffs in certain circumstances yes but what Trump is doing is crazy like he's very clear I oppose this thing that is being done Democrats were rip it liberals he got rid of shreds for daring to say that in some instances tariffs are good and good. And that's where the Democratic Party is going to be,

unfortunately. And that is where so much of the country is going to be. Because it's difficult to have this nuance like think tariffs are a tool, right? They can be used in a good way, and they can be used in a very bad way. But it's hard to have that nuanced conversation when they're being used to just intentionally crash the markets and blow up the whole economy. Totally. I totally agree. I can see it coming from a mile away is that this negative polarization and increasing the way already the way that it is, the Democrats are done with tariffs, probably for an entire generation. Keep going. The independents will join you there. And eventually the non-MAGA part or whatever is left of the Republican Party. And you'll find yourself at a

supermajority who supports things like TPP or whatever. And we're going to be right back to where we started 25 years from now. And so this is where, look, you do need to blame the practitioners, where if you're going to do something which is genuinely extraordinary, you have to do it right. Now, nobody is saying Donald J. Trump is Mr. Detail or any of that. But I mean, at a basic level, what people, I think, voted for is there's this idea that there's a senile old man in the White House. We're going to restore things to normalcy. And yes, we'll have our chaos in terms of Trump, you know, drum thing about Mika Brzezinski's facelift.

But the S&P goes up. The gas price goes down. The people around him seem to generally-ish more competent compared to these Jake Sullivan-type idiots or Anthony Blinken, so fine. But that's not what you're getting now. And like you said, now you own this thing 100%. Okay. People have said, oh, he's a world historic figure. He's making a huge bet. And it is true. Trump is actually fundamentally a gambler. He believes that he can do this and he can get away with it. Obviously, he's 10 times more successful than I am in politics, so maybe he's right. But it's one of those where you can see all of the building blocks for a crisis. I was thinking about this with Doge as well. At a certain point, it's no longer up to you. Like I said before about that whole airline disaster, imagine if they had fired air traffic controllers and you had a crash. Even if you're not responsible for that crash,

you're getting blamed for that crash. Same thing with what's happening right now with the economic, you know, with these economic, the tariffs and a potential recession. Let's say that something totally out of the norm happens. Remember previous recessions that have sparked actual sell-offs like this. 9-11 and the pandemic.

Who knows? Shit happens. That's one of the rules of running the world. You have no idea. Russia invades Ukraine. Boom. Gas market entirely implodes. October 7th, change the entire route of every shipping container in the entire world.

You can't plan for such an event. So let's say he's got this grand plan, and then boom, something happens in the world. Now you're in that 40th order consequence, but you are going to bear 100% of the responsibility for that. And people don't forgive. And, you know, honestly, they shouldn't forgive you. They shouldn't forgive you. You screw people's lives, and if you get laid off as a result of them, well, I don't know what to tell you. That's the number one thing you're not supposed to do.

Yeah. He said some really wild things, too. Like he said there should be no supply chains. They should all be in the U.S. This is like the philosophy of North Korea, like unironically is the philosophy of North Korea. My heart is – in my heart, I am an autarkist, which is what you're talking about. That's what the North Korean model is, which is why do we really need all of these other countries. That's where my heart is. That is not where my head and my stock portfolio is for the reality of all of the global supply

chain. It would be great to get 20% more autarkic. It would be a nice little goal for us. But look, let's be real. If we want to do that, it's going to take a billion dollars in investment. We're going to need, actually not a billion, many, many, many, hundreds and hundreds, probably a trillion dollars. And even that, maybe we'll get five, 10%. It's a start. At the very least, it's a philosophy. If anything, I think Trump is negatively polarizing us. And I think 10 years from now, what you're going to watch is Trump is a lot like FDR in that he showed people what was possible in such a way that people are like, I'm not so sure about this. Donald Trump will be the very last president to have IEA by authority. I'm 100% confident of that. Donald Trump will be the very last president to be able to, you know,

alien enemies. That's getting some sort of, you know, when the House takes credit, just like they passed the 22nd Amendment, they're going to say, and Congress has to approve by 52 votes or whatever. And a lot of the things that he's pushing right now, the legacy of that will actually likely be one of reaction and reassertion, I think, by Congress. Obviously, you could be totally wrong, but that's what I would consider. Yeah, well, last thought on this, on the sort of broad historical sweep. I mean, in part because of the disaster of the Smoot-Hawley terrorists and how they exacerbated the Great Depression, you know, progressives, FDR was a free trade guy.

I mean, he, you know, moved very much in the direction of- Can I just say that on the smoke and poly thing? It's not a hundred, like that's a very Friedman monetarist- But it did make the Great Depression worse. Like at the time it was terrible economic policy. I'm still not ready to say it was, well, okay. The monetarists are the people who genuinely blame it for, and I do not think that is accurate, but that's a much more nuanced.

But, you know, back to my point, it is widely believed and was widely believed at the time that Smoot-Hawley exacerbated the Great Depression. And FDR's whole, you know, push was to roll back trade barriers. And that helps, you know, begins an era in which the progressive position on trade was for a long time, lowering trade barriers and lowering tariffs. And during McKinley's time, also, there was actually pushback. It was somewhat divided depending on the industry and what you were doing, whether you're a farmer, a manufacturer, whatever. But, you know, there was a long period in which the progressive position was a free trade position. And that changed, you know, there was a long period in which the progressive position was a free trade position. And that changed, you know, over time. And that's why, you know, I do think there are so many facets to what is being done right now. It just is impossible to wrap your head around.

And I can't think of another single policy move that has been made by a leader here or around the world. Maybe like, you know, our decision to enter World War II, but that was sort of like made for us when we were attacked at Pearl Harbor. But that could have this level of both domestic and global radical fallout. And the other thing that we haven't even touched on here is the rest of the world also is going to get a say. You know, the Europeans are getting ready to announce what their retaliatory tariffs are going to be or what their response is going to be. China's already announced quite a significant response. You already had a shift in the global power balance.

You already had a move away somewhat from the dollar as well. And that, too, will have a massive global reordering effect with consequences that are hard to comprehend. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like, that's what's really important, and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better.

Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the

iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast Season 2 This is an iHeart Podcast.